


Paint me a Picture (paint me a dream)

by gourdier



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-20 17:57:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18997639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gourdier/pseuds/gourdier
Summary: Naminé, at two weeks old, travels through the castle and learns a little more about her powers.





	Paint me a Picture (paint me a dream)

It’s snowing in Castle Oblivion.

The flakes fall soft and soundless and they bite in a thousand pinpricks on Naminé’s uncovered skin. She holds out her arms and watches them melt.

The door bangs open and her limbs snap back protectively. Larxene stalks towards her on sharp, heavy boots.

“I know this is _your_ fault, you little witch. Whatever you’re trying to pull, make it stop.”

Her hands twist in her lap. Her shoulders go up.

“I don’t know how,” Naminé murmurs and jumps at the _bang!_ when Larxene’s fist hits the table. Sparks fly from the impact.

“Bull _shit_ ,” Larxene snarls, rows of white, white teeth bearing down on Naminé from above. “Don’t complain that you can’t control your powers when this is your fault. You can turn them off any time. Like, oh I don’t know, _right now_.”

“Now, now. Is that any way to treat our charge?” Marluxia’s voice precedes his figure, materializing in a shower of pink before them. Larxene leans away from him with an “ugh” and Naminé draws in a shuddering breath.

“Naminé, this is your doing, isn’t it?” Marluxia’s grin brooks no argument. “As the appointed leader of this castle, it’s unfortunate to find a subordinate of mine acting out. Do find a way to stop it, won’t you?”

There’s no other option but to nod. _I can’t tell them. They w_ _on’t believe me if I say that_ _I_ _don’t even know_ how _I started it_ , she thinks. The flakes against her neck are cold as knife-sharp steel and she shivers.

“A shame you can’t magic up one of those keyblades for me instead,” Marluxia muses, chin in his hand. “The things I could do with one of those...”

“Hey. Not in front of the brat.” Larxene’s words are sharp but her tone is teasing, light. “Not until the big strong hero gets closer at least.”

Marluxia’s grin is sharp. “Quite right. Why don’t we discuss this elsewhere then?”

And in a blink, they’re gone.

* * *

It’s been the better part of a month since she came into the world, found and observed closely until the Organization could decide a use for her and this castle, situated in between the realms of light and dark. She was born knowing her name and her origin – and the gist of her abilities.

She can feel Sora’s heart, distant as it is, but getting closer with every beat. Her connection to him glows warm in her chest, fending off the cold.

Naminé folds up her sketchbook, gathers her colours, and steps out of the chair, out of the room, and into the hallway.

The snow persists, falling as far as she can see and when she peeks into the other rooms, there's a light dusting building up even in those untrod chambers.

Axel looks up at her from one of them where he’s made himself comfortable on a washed-out sofa, incongruously placed.

“Yo.” He waves and she returns the gesture, hands and limbs stiff. “Neat trick.”

“Thank you,” she says, edging through the doorway. “Aren’t you cold?”

Axel rolls his eyes. “Yeah, but if I warm the place up, I’ll end up stuck in a giant puddle and this snow would turn into rain. No thanks. The others tell you to quit it yet?”

“Yes,” Naminé mumbles.

“Good. Get on that.” Axel is no longer looking at her, having crossed his arms and closed his eyes.

Namine shifts from foot to foot and worries her lip. Axel cracks an eye open again.

“What, you’re still here?”

“You – you talk to Roxas, right?”

“The brass asked me to train him. So yeah, we’ve exchanged a couple words. You wanna be his friend or something?” He snorts. “Maybe if they let you walk outta this dump one day.”

“I’ve seen you.” Naminé twists her hands together, trying to figure out how to say what she wants to. “In his memories. He’s wondering about you. I thought you’d like to know that.”

Axel’s face, normally the picture of nonchalance, has gone blank. Even from the corner of her eye, Naminé can see how stiff he’s gone. She wonders if she said the right thing.

“Sure he’s wondering about me. The kid probably wants to ask why the sun sets red and looking for his designated babysitter. Well, tough luck. I’m on my paid vacation.”

She shakes her head. “It’s not that. He’s worried. He feels – ”

“But Nobodies don’t feel things, right?” Axel cuts in, tone cheerful. “You sure you aren’t mixing him up with another keyblade wielder? Man, you really need to get a handle on your powers. I mean, check out all this.” He circles a hand to indicate the snow piling up around them. “Neat look, but not the one we wanna go with for our guests, y’know? I know Marluxia sure wouldn’t like that.”

Naminé feels her back stiffen. Her fingers clutch tighter at her notebook and pastels.

“I’m sorry I wasted your time,” she mumbles, eyes glued to her feet. “I won’t bother you again.”

“Yeah, yeah. See you around.” Axel’s face is turned away from her. He doesn’t look back as she trudges back into the hallway.

Her feet shuffle along, leaving a long trail behind her while she thinks over her options. Of the Organization members in the castle, Vexen and Zexion were the ones who had run tests of her abilities, coming in and out through portals of darkness. All Naminé remembers from overhearing the others is that they’d been assigned to the basement level where she has never tread. It’s no small distance to travel from the top floor.

She holds out a tentative hand and tries to call on the darkness within her empty body. A sputtering, smoky circle appears in the air before her and dies away. Naminé sighs and continues on her path. _Axel’s right_ , she thinks, _I don’t have a good enough handle on my powers. I can’t even manage this._

Still, looking back at the footprints she’d made in the otherwise pristine layer of frost in the hallway is strangely satisfying. It’s proof of her existence that a portal wouldn’t have given her.

She reaches the hall’s end and the stairway curls beneath her feet, leading her down, down, down.

Lexaeus passes by her at the very bottom. He makes eye contact but otherwise doesn’t acknowledge her presence.

She follows, gripping her pastels and sketchbook tight, watching mini-snow drifts pile up and flake off of his mountainous shoulders.

He leads her to the kitchen where he stops and rummages through the fridge. Vexen arches an eyebrow at her from where he sits at the dining table.

“Naminé. It’s rare to see you this far down in the castle,” says a voice next to her.

She flinches away from the doorway where Zexion is leaning. Hidden as he was in the darkness, he’d escaped her notice.

“Could it be that Marluxia has deigned to seek our assistance?” Vexen asks with a snort. “What a surprise. I’d imagine this cold would suit his frigid tendencies. Though perhaps it wilts his flowers.”

“I thought his flowers were made of magic,” Lexaeus rumbles. He pops open a soda can as he leans against the stovetop counter.

“That’s not the point,” Vexen snaps. “I was being facetious. It must have sailed over the head of an oaf like you.”

“Naminé.” Zexion’s voice is devoid of inflection and he levels her with a stare. “You came because you needed our help. Is that right?”

Naminé nods.

“I’m not sure how to stop it.” Her voice doesn’t carry but the other members go quiet.

Vexen stands and Zexion gives him a nod.

“A curious mystery,” Vexen says, his voice sharp with interest. “Perhaps it would do us well to investigate it further.”

A room further down houses beeping monitors that barely light the room enough for her to see. Vexen clicks a switch and a single lamp hums to life above a tattered reclining chair dusted with snow. He sketches an exaggerated bow before it. Naminé perches on its edge, worrying the tip of a pastel under her thumbnail.

“How do your abilities work, exactly?” Zexion doesn’t bother to look at her, turned to a keyboard set up high for him to type into.

“I think...through my feelings. And my connection to Sora.”

Vexen scoffs. “Your feelings.”

“Perhaps considering her origins, it would make sense that she is...unique,” Zexion says.

“Her and our newest members,” Vexen murmurs. Naminé watches Zexion’s screen flicker over an image of a small hooded figure before it disappears. “Thank you for assistance by the way, Naminé. Our newest project is performing admirably.”

She shrinks in on herself. She doesn’t want to think about what they had asked her to do in order to test her abilities.

She knows what she’s done is nothing short of cruel and she hates it.

“That sketchbook is new. Don’t tell me Marluxia’s been giving gifts to the members on the upper floors now.”

Naminé clutches it tighter. “It helps me to see.”

At this, Zexion turns to her. “To see Sora’s memories?”

“Yes.” Putting images and feelings from his mind onto paper in a way she can understand, a way she can shape, solidifies it in her hands – makes it hers. Even without her innate magic, that feels like a power in itself.

“Why don’t you draw us something now?” Vexen’s voice betrays a keen interest. “Like say – a heartless.”

“Right now?” Naminé hates how small her voice is.

“No, I meant never. Yes, now!”

Naminé’s hands shake under their watchful scrutiny. Her fist goes tight and she holds on to the feeling that clenches at the empty cavity in her chest. She remembers – she remembers Sora seeing his home attacked and consumed by a crawling darkness all round. His anger. His confusion. His fear.

She traces the inky shine of an oil slick on her page.

Next to the desk, a small bulbous creature struggles upwards from the snow. It taps its feet, bobbing its head left and right with pale sightless eyes.

“A manifestation of a memory,” Zexion murmurs. “Could it be made possible due to the hero’s current proximity?”

Vexen’s voice is delighted. “Now erase it.”

Her whole body is trembling now. The heartless from Sora’s memories – the heartless she created – steps towards her. Its hands claw aimlessly at the fluttering snow, searching for something it can never reach. Even if it’s a figment of a memory, does that make it any less real than her, a shell of someone else?

“I can’t.” She’s frozen, can’t even twitch as the shadow swipes the air in front of her. Her breaths come to her rough and panicked.

“Useless,” Vexen snaps and in a flash of his shield, the shadow’s head separates from its body, dissipating before it can hit the ground. The body crumbles and a flashing heart floats from its fading corpse. A card lies where once was a creature as alive as her.

Zexion bends down to pick it up between two gloved fingers.

“It smells like that fabricated heartless,” he says and tucks it into his sleeve. “How interesting.”

“Give it here,” Vexen says, and swipes a hand at Zexion when a speaker hidden in the corner of the ceiling shrieks a metallic groan and Axel’s voices hisses through it.

“Is this thing working? Hey you guys downstairs, you’re free right? What am I saying, you’re always free. We know you’ve got Naminé so uh, could you send her up? Whenever’s good but Marluxia wants her back now and he’s the boss so. Yeah. See ya.”

“Those ingrates,” Vexen snarls as the speaker crackles to a quiet. “The nerve of them, to dare to give orders to us – to _me_ , a senior member! The disrespect!”

“It seems your time is up Naminé,” Zexion says, looking back to one of the monitors and tapping at it again. “We must prepare for the hero’s arrival. You know the way back.”

Wordlessly, she gathers her things and makes her exit.

By now, the snow covers her ankles and her breaths are a thick white mist as they leave her body. As physical and tangible as the heartless. And just as fleeting.

Naminé pauses on the stairs up to catch her breath.

_We must prepare for the hero’s arrival._

She can feel every step of Sora’s approach where her heart is tied to his. It’s an ache almost, that makes her clutch her chest tight and shut her eyes.

His heart is so warm, enveloping her from the outside in when she sinks into their ill-formed bond. She doesn’t belong and she never will – but it’s enough to forget, for a second, where she is. Where she will always be.

She drowns herself in his strongest, brightest memories. If she pretends, immerses herself in his heart, she can almost feel sand prickling the soles of her feet, sea-salt spray against her face, the sun scorching and familiar.

Sora’s memories buoy her up flight after flight of stairs, drawing her into a doorway, and upon entering it –

The sand of Destiny Islands is soft and gives way easily when she stumbles forward. The sight of the waves lapping against the shore mesmerizes her, so blue and clear that she could cry with a nostalgia that isn’t all her own.

Naminé picks her way in carefully, eyes wide at familiar sights that she could sketch by heart being seen for the first time. That bridge that Sora would race Riku under, running towards Kairi who gamely referees. The waterfall that hides their secret base. Their makeshift raft sitting half-finished on the beach. The swooping paopu tree they’d take turns napping on and where they’d gather at the end of a long day of fantasizing about other worlds to watch the best view of the sunset this world has to offer.

This island is the picture of Sora’s memories, down to the very last detail. But the more she wanders, the more Naminé realizes that’s what it all is. A picture.

The waves don’t crash and hiss as they lick the shore, the breeze doesn’t carry the heady scent of the sea, the sun does not warm her, and when she works up the nerve to put a paopu to her lips, the skin of it gives under her teeth but inside, she finds it hollow. This is Sora’s memory. She doesn’t belong.

“Oh? What’s this?”

Naminé jerks at Marluxia’s voice. He stands on the sand, smiling at her, and the sound of blood rushing in her ears nearly drowns out his next words.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this marvelous skill of yours earlier? This is a far cry from some snow.” His eyes gleam.

She backs away, towards where she can feel the exit but in a blink he’s by her side, a firm grip on her shoulder. Tight but not painful, not yet.

“You know, I’ve just come up with the most fabulous idea,” he whispers into her ear, heedless of her futile squirming. “Aren’t you lonely, being the only one of your age here? Why don’t we get you some friends?”

She turns her head away but knows there’s no choice in the matter. Marluxia is looking in her direction but what he’s seeing isn’t her.

Naminé shudders and shuts her eyes tight to keep the tears from coming out. Even the memory of Sora’s bravery and courage can’t help her forever. She wishes, desperately, that he was here with her now.

She wishes she wasn’t so alone.


End file.
